Here’s a basic day of meals:
Breakfast (nashta)- We generally get about 4 things for breakfast. (8:30AM)
Always: Mangoes, toast, chai (actually phonetically spelled chay)
Sometimes: porridge, eggs, beans/sprouts mixture that tastes sort of like lentils, hash browns (with onions, to clarify), pancakes with honey (are the best), French toast (once, but didn’t taste too French-toasty)
Lunch: You get 2-3 “sometimes” foods with lunch. (Sometime in between 12-2:30PM, generally around 1:30PM, on school days at 12PM).
Always: Rice, Lentil Curry (wet curry fyi), roti
Sometimes: salad (not with spinach- see below), some mix of veggies, potatoes, something with soya, chutney
Afternoon Break: Chay plus tasty treats (generally, a sweet, samosas, or other small snack. Once we had grilled cheese!)
Dinner: (generally 7PM or later. Because we have didis (trans: sisters) making us food, we eat around 7 or 8pm. Most people eat around 10PM, or even later!)
Always: Roti
Sometimes: Rice, paneer of some variety (on the best days), kheer (again, good days), potatoes in curry (standard fare), vegetables (standard), yogurt with dough (generally sort of gross)
Of course, do remember that some of the meals are tailored for us, especially breakfast.
Want more explanation of what food we eat?
Roti- The basic bread in this region. It can be described like a tortilla, but thicker (also probably made of rice flour).
Baati- Balls of dough stuffed with things.
Rice- goes with everything
Dal- lentils. Yellow lentils are most readily available here
Vegetables: tomatoes (not really vegetables, but we eat them sometimes), okra, bitter gourd (ew), cucumbers, garlic, onion. Sometimes we get a salad (pronounced saa-laud for all of you Americans), which is generally made from tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers.
Sauce- Sauce is the word used for ketchup. Ketchup’s only name is actually sauce.
Chutney- a sweet and spicy sauce that can be used on almost anything and is really delicious. There are many different kinds of chutney, including mint, mango, and tomato. Chutney is always tasty though.
Mangoes- Always come with breakfast- it’s mango season!
Potatoes- can secretly be in lots of things. Often there are chunks of potatoes in mixes of vegetables. We also occasionally get them at breakfast in hash brown form.
Nan-Finally got some nan at a restaurant called Yelchinko.
Paranta- delicious breakfast food. A flat pancake-type thing. eat with Indian peanut butter = delicious.
Gulab jamun- balls of fried dough soaked in sugar (essentially). Very delicious, but too sweet if they are cold.
jalebi – fried dough that looks sort of like funnel cake covered in sugar. Again, only tasty if hot.
Other tidbits:
Other kinds of Indian food: Chinese, American, etc.
Strict veg. – Many people are strict veg, which can have 2 meanings: either vegan, or vegetarian, but no eggs.
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